The peril of awards.

It’s a fact of life: awards, no matter what form they take and no matter how well intentioned, leave disappointed people in their wake.

Including me.

Michael Schwendt has expressed his disappointment at not having received this award, and now I find myself wondering how many other invaluable Fedora contributors say nothing, but silently feel hurt that their contributions were not judged “worthy” for this particular recognition.

Michael, to you in particular — and, by extension, to others who may have felt similarly but didn’t want to say so — I sincerely apologize if this award made you feel unworthy in any way. I can assure you, making you feel like crap was the absolute *last* thing on our minds. Why didn’t you receive this award, when others did? To be completely honest, I don’t remember. We came up with the names, we sat on them for a while, and when we released Fedora 7, we announced the winners. It wasn’t much more complicated than that. That’s not a very transparent process, and not very satisfying to “winners” or “losers”, I’m sure.